Thank you to all who joined us for this gathering. We felt your presence, and we know our sisters and brothers in Palestine, and all over the world, did too.
Special thanks to those who contributed their beautiful, healing words:
, , , , (forgive me if I’ve forgotten anyone).I am in awe of your splendor.
I am flowers at your feet.
Poems and readings:
Ginny’s poem ‘When The Men Defect’:
When the men defect, turn their back on tyranny, greed, manipulation, war—
They take their bodies back from the hands of old gnarled men and put them into the laps of mothers and beautiful lovers and gardens and rivers and oceans rolling gentle on the beach.
When men defect, they walk beside beautiful, strong women pushing strollers full of healthy, happy children. They touch our waist and we nod at them smiling, a ‘yes darling’ in our sparkling eyes.
Yes, darling, I am for you, too. Come, come. Here are your cookies and milk, here are our bodies with your intertwined in equal pleasure. Here is your freedom to walk with your brothers. Run with your brothers through the fenceless lands of this good earth.
Catch what you can and bring it back to our warm and stoked fires, and we will rejoice in your successful hunts.
When the men defect, we will go as one to demand their release from their prisons and if they refuse to let them go, we will pour over the prisons like a river after heavy rain on the mountaintops and erode them to sand with our bodies. We will burn their prisons to the ground when the men defect.
When the men defect, they will be rocked to sleep in their beds by arms that know who they were on the day they were born. They will be lulled to their dreams by songs and lullabies that carry their true godly names and heal them of their wounds all night long.
When the men defect, they will awaken after sound and glorious sleep, feeling rested and excited by what pleasures and ease and food and clean waters await them. The children will greet them with toothy grins and delight to see them returned to us and be ready for play in the sunshine—women all around them making pancakes and biscuits and scrambled eggs and bright juice and jelly for their toast, and we will all eat together at a long table in the gardens with flowers and bowls of honey and cream.
GOOD MORNING BELOVEDS, when the men defect. Welcome home, dearest ones! When the men defect. When the men put down their guns, we fill their hands with freedom, love, and their ease with us. We pull them close to our breasts and say yes, dear, for you, too. For you, too.
When the men defect—turn their strong backs to money and the play for power, they will have no need for money and will be granted all the power to be themselves and stay as long as they like in the laps of strong women who love them and honor them, as well as the women themselves are honored and revered, just as they are.
When the men defect, the gates are open and they come to us and go from us as they please, for we are strong knowing they are out there at the periphery, surrounding us all in a circle of protection and care. They will know who they are and walk as they please, sail around the world, and take nothing from it but their need for the day and sail on just to see it and feel the stars on their eyelashes at night, the cool breeze, and the spray on their beautiful faces.
When the men defect, we rebuild it together and let the burdens of providing fall equally on us all, so that no one person feels it all for themselves. When the men defect, we are all free. Palestine is free, the Congo is free, Sudan is free, the children starving at their mothers’ breast are fed and healed and returned to us whole and strong and free again.
When the men defect, the animals are let loose from their cages and taught their own ways again much to our delight. When the men defect, women grow like the moon grows bright and glowing and full. we pull the water and the fire toward us and back again as we need.
When the men defect, they stand back in awe as we heal this planet to full abundance for all and open our arms to include them as we all enjoy its bounty together.
When the men would only finally defect, we would be free beings here, sovereign, powerful, beautiful, strong, healthy and at our ease. Let loose the blindfolds from their eyes, I pray. Let them see and know now who they truly are and give them the strength to defect. Defect! Defect! Defect. O my brothers, sons, and fathers—DEFECT. Come back to us and we will surround you well until you are whole again. We put flowers at your feet to remind you of your boyhood and your mothers who were not broken but kept close in their kitchens and loved you best.
Remember! Remember! Remember, I say. Remember that you are a God here and no old man should ever use your body and mind for his own wicked dreams. We will protect you from their grasp and set you free, whole and healed as the day you were born.
When men defect, they will no longer fight for anything, for everything is given freely. When men defect, there is nothing left to do but play—invent, think, create, build, design, run, lay long in the grass, plant things and watch them grow under your gentle, thoughtful hands. Just be at your ease whatever you choose to do or not do.
Lay down your chains and your weapons of war and walk free among us. Defect, and we are with you forever. Defect and your rent is paid. Your debts are paid. You are forgiven and you begin again at your ease in your own individual way of being—whole and healed and rested and beloved and safe and loved, just as you are. Defect and you are forgiven and free. We are proud of you and we believe in you and we know and respect who you are.
Come back. Come back! We wait here for you.
Nick’s poem:
We, the men who never stopped being wide-eyed boys, We, the men who were never able to allow the yoke to settle,
We, the men who rarely found a partner who could match our gentleness and intensity,
We, the men who have always known we were the future,
We are waiting patiently for you in a field, just outside of town.
We, the men who hate war, We, the men who reject slavery of all kinds, We, the men who care for the fallen butterfly, the baby bird, the wounded child-adult,
We, the men who have been blessed with the gift of sight, We are waiting, patiently, in a natural clearing in the trees, just outside your village.
We, the men who weep, We, the men who changed our babies' nappies, We, the men who have learned that Acceptance of What Is, is the key...
We are waiting for you.
Ayana’s poem:
Disrobe
Take it off—
the cloak of compliance,
the stitched-in silence,
the hemmed edges of playing small.
Let fall
the threadbare beliefs
handed down like heirlooms
but never yours to begin with.
Unfasten the myths
of who you had to be
to be loved,
to be safe,
to be worthy.
Let your skin remember
what wind feels like
when there’s nothing between
you and the elements.
Stand bare in your becoming.
Not naked,
but holy—
truth draped in its rawest form.
The world taught you armor.
Now learn the power
of walking uncloaked.
Marc Kelly Smith’s poem:
The bell hooks reading from Appalachian Elegy:
https://scalawagmagazine.org/2022/01/bell-hooks-appalachian-elegy/
Green Tara mantra:
Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha
Imagine video:
And here is the full cover image of the mandala medicine drawing for Palestine by Mary Jane.
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